Renowned journalist Artem Frankov has told what he expects from the match of the 2nd round of the group stage of Euro 2023 (U-21) between the youth national teams of Ukraine and Romania, which will take place today in Bucharest.
Artem Frankov"The second match/tour is designed to decide the fate of our national team and its hopes of getting a ticket to the Olympics 2024 and decide it positively. The disposition is as follows: we beat the Croatians 2-0 in the first leg with confidence and beauty, the Spaniards left no wet space for the hosts 3-0. The Croats have created at least two chances against us when we were 0-2, Spaniards have not given such freedom, everything was clear-cut there.
Based on what I have seen in these matches, as well as on the analysis of the participating teams' line-up, I assume: Spain has no problems in the group at all and is simply the strongest, so it surely beats Croats; Ukraine can under no circumstances hope to succeed against Spaniards in the last round, so the necessary points must be earned here and now. Reasons, except for purely tournamentrelated: our team is strong in 'forward' and has a big hidden reserve thanks to the players of the first national team, who have hardly been involved in the tournament so far (except Trubin, of course); the Romanian team, just like the Romanian football in general, is nothing special, the more so they probably studied it both in terms of weaknesses and shortcomings. Stop! I'm not calling for hats to be thrown at the Tricolours - they played in the semi-finals last Euro. But...
At the helm of the current Tricolour Michy are Emil Sendoy, the University of Craiova legend, who almost missed out on Zorya Luhansk in Conference League qualifying a year ago. He played centre-back, and so we shouldn't expect his team to come at our honed swords with their bare heels," Frankov said.
